Father's Day

The picture of Jack in the grass isn't from father's day, but Jack really likes lying in the grass, so I thought I should post it.

I hope Sean felt dutifully honored today, as he daily exceeds my every expectation as Jack's father. Sean slept in while Jack and I puttered around the house and later we went to a barbeque at the home of one of our dear friends who just finished the AIDS bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles! 

Sean got a cup of coffee at Philz on the way. I had a sip, but I'm still shying away from the caffeine since that rave Jack was throwing back in Mendocino.

My internship at the Labor Archives and Research Center turned into a job this summer, so Jack is spending time with artist and educator Molly one day a week. Molly and I met when we worked a summer session at Children's Day School together and there are not enough hours in the day to praise her. Jack seems smitten as well. 

Jack continues to enjoy the park, grabbing his toes and chewing on his feet, and each morning he smiles at the light coming through our blue spotted shower curtain like it's personally saying good morning to him.

Sean's brother Scott made a (yet another) brilliant comment when he said (about babies sleeping) "it's the first thing they learn". And it's HARD dude. Pretty much once a baby is awake for an hour you're supposed to start getting them to go to sleep again. I'm not tough enough to put him in a room, close the door and let him wail away until he give up on the idea of anyone coming to save him, so it's a long, complicated dance to get Jack to sleep. 

Now try grafting that onto the real world-where you have to be places at certain times. Try telling someone who wants to hold your baby that Jack needs to go to sleep when he doesn't look tired because once he LOOKS tired he's already overtired and they think you're a crazy, overprotective first-time parent. As adults if we don't get enough sleep, we're exhausted and we sleep really well at night. Babies and children are the opposite. When they are overtired, their bodies release a chemical that acts like adreniline, and they actually sleep less and less well. So if we go somewhere in the middle of the day and Jack misses a nap, he's not going to sleep as well at for the rest of the day, and well, that means we don't sleep at night either. So it's tough, but we're figuring it out. We've got a couple really good books that are enlightening us on how to do this right. We want Jack to enjoy the world and we want the world to be friendly to Jack and that is a lot easier to manage when he's had enough sleep. 

It's gotten much more difficult as Jack has become more aware of the world around him and nothing slips by him. His latest thing is trying to pull the stripes off the rocking chair and sitting up on my lap, playing with his feet until finally he glances over at me and smiles as if to say, "oh YOU'RE here! have you seen these toes? they're incredible!" He doesn't sleep in the stroller or the baby carrier like he used to either, he wants to be up and looking around, checking everything out. It's a good thing he's such a nice guy.